


elysium

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Forgiveness, Gabriel is human again and it's kind of okay, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Medical Procedures, Post-Canon, Recovery, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14542272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Reaper is Gabriel again. Jack's not Soldier: 76 anymore, or at least he doesn't have to be. They're both themselves, the way they used to be. And not at all.It's a long series of steps from A to B, but they're taking them.





	elysium

Rule #1 is no TV.

Well, alright--no  _ cable _ TV. Nothing that plays the news. No op-eds, no documentaries. Biopics are alright, so long as they’re both watching, and so long as they’re both still laughing. With the never-ending supply of on-demand video they have access to, it’s easy to pretend, or even believe, they’re not really missing all that much.

Rule #2 is not to leave the complex without notifying staff. 

Which is harder to fit into normalcy.

\--

“Transitional living,” Angela had told them, “is helpful for many patients as an important step in recovery, and in regaining independence.”

“I’m not saying no,” Jack had insisted. “It just feels…”

“Imprisoning,” Angela had sighed. “I know.”

Jack had grimaced. “The late, great Strike-Commander Morrison, under constant supervision for his own good and the good of others.”

Gabe, who had been unnervingly silent since the idea was pitched, finally spoke up. “First of all,” he’d said, his voice still a little rough around the edges, “that’s no different than it was before. Second. You don’t have to stay.”

“Fuck you,” Jack had snapped. Gabe’s hands had gone up, surrendering.

“Gabriel?” Angela had prompted. 

Jack had watched Gabe’s jaws muscles work, like he couldn’t figure out whether to speak or grind down on his own teeth. 

Finally, his head had dropped back. A sigh had exited his lungs. “You turn into a smoke monster one time,” he’d said, “and they lock you up in the old folks’ home.”

\--

Stonegarden Living Community is not an old folks’ home, despite Gabe’s whining about it. 

They may, in fact, be the oldest residents there. Most of the rest of the houses in the neighborhood (and Jack had insisted they call it  _ a neighborhood _ , also despite Gabe’s whining) were occupied by younger residents who’d lived through a childhood of atrocities and were just now taking steps into the world at large, or middle-aged war vets who for one reason or another were too much of a problem case for typical VA units. 

It was why they ended up here, after all. It took problem cases.

It was also the most lax on the rules, which Jack and Gabe had both insisted on. They had physical and mental health specialists on staff 24/7, but no technical requirement to see them. They had people to help you run errands, but no rules about accompaniment outside the community. They had that rule about notification of exit, but no time to be back by, no curfew, no quota for outside hours.

The point of the place was for those things to be there, if necessary, and out of sight if not. A safety net, not a restraint. A crutch, not an ankle weight.

It’s still odd, adjusting.

“You really don’t have to live here, too,” Gabe had pointed out again after a few days. After the first time someone pleasantly smiles at Jack on the sidewalk and asked, in that way doctors ask, if he was doing well today, sir. “I’m the one under International-fucking-Committee mandated treatment. Not you.”

“I’m one of the ones who mandated it,” Jack had snapped back. “So stop trying to get rid of me.”

“Christ,” Gabriel had muttered. “Control freak.”

\--

And besides, Jack thought, waking up from a nightmare of blood and bullets and smoke for the third time that week. It’s helpful.

\--

They’ve settled into a routine, at this point, four months along. The no-TV rule had helped; a self-instigated one that the staff now knew about, kept tabs on. The therapy, for both of them, hadn’t hurt either. 

Most days are blissfully, unimaginably boring. They wake up. Gabe makes coffee; it’s good. Jack makes breakfast; it’s alright. Gabe goes for a run, and then comes home and showers, and then Jack goes for a run. Always one at a time, now, after their competitive streaks had kicked in once and they’d run thirty miles before Gabe had staggered over to the bushes and thrown up, then tried to keep going. 

It had felt almost like the old days, really. Except that Gabe never would’ve lost. 

Regardless, they go one at a time now. And then they go out places, sometimes. Not anywhere in particular. Not anywhere scheduled, catalogued, debriefed. Just--places. A diner. A farmer’s market. An old used bookstore, once, where Gabe had bought  _ War and Peace _ in Spanish because it was the biggest book he could find and Jack, in an impressive display of obedience of the rules, had not bought  _ Sunset Hours: Where Overwatch is Now _ .

When they get home, usually around three, if it’s not a Monday then they mill about. That’s what Jack’s mother used to call doing nothing of value--milling about. It’s an odd luxury, one that Jack finds himself indulging in more and more often. Enough so that he, dangerously, is beginning to think of it less and less as a luxury, and more and more as something he actually deserves.

If it is a Monday, it’s harder. But they can deal with those too.

At night they read, or watch a well-selected movie, or just sit on the back porch like the old men they sometimes let themselves be. They drink, when they want to. Just a little. Gabe’s not supposed to indulge too much, but he’d snapped  _ I haven’t had a goddamn drink or fuck or smoke in twenty years, let me have  _ this _ at least _ , and they’d acquiesced enough to allow him a glass of wine at dinner. He considered two fingers of whiskey the equivalent. 

“You know,” Gabe says, on one of those porch-nights, when it’s cold but not cold enough for either of them to notice. “This isn’t the worst thing in the fuckin’ world.”

“No,” Jack admits. 

“Huh,” Gabe says, like it surprises him, and he leans out of his chair to kiss Jack.

The kissing’s nice, too. Another part of the routine. They haven’t talked about it now any more than they talked about it when it started, back when they were twenty-ish and dumb as rocks. Now they’re sixty-ish, is all, even if neither of them quite look it.

“I’m tired,” Gabe says, and stands. “Goodnight.”

That’s it. Efficient as ever.

Jack stays outside a little longer, watching living room and bedroom lights flicker off around the neighborhood. The community center stays lit, like a beacon. It’s open if someone needs it. Sometimes that someone is Gabe, on a bad night. Once it was Jack, on a worse night. 

Not the worst thing in the fuckin’ world, Jack agrees. Not even close.

When he goes to bed he peels off his clothes in the right order and folds them up the right way. Regulation. Hasn’t managed to break that habit just yet; and it’s convenient, anyway, so why would he.

_ Control _ , his therapist’s voice in his head tells him.  _ Agency. _

He slips into bed behind Gabe, who is either not yet asleep or has woken up at the touch and pulls Jack’s arm over his chest. 

Jack spreads his palm out and  _ feels _ . The fluttering heartbeat under his skin. The forced circulation through his lungs. The burning, consumptive heat that radiates off of the flesh. 

He nestles his forehead into the crook of Gabe’s neck, and breathes.

\--

Therapy’s a Wednesday, for Jack. Fridays for Gabe. It spaces the week out nicely.

His appointments are set for 8 in the morning, so he gets to run first, those days. He tries to keep it brief. An hour, max. Otherwise, when he’s already raw like this, he gets carried away. Lets the old instinct take over, the burning need to  _ go, go, go, don’t stop, don’t stop, can’t-- _

Gabe had waited two and a half hours last time, before coming to look for him. By then he was far enough out that he’d missed his appointment and had to reschedule. 

So he keeps it short. 

When he gets back Gabe’s already doing push-ups in the living room, because he’s a show-off, because he’s always been a show-off. “Show-off,” Jack tells him, and he grins.

“Warming up,” Gabe tells him, and Jack can see how his muscles twitch, like they’re ready to release, and then he’s out the door like a shot. 

Jack walks to therapy. It’s off-site, but near enough he doesn’t have to drive. It’s convenient.

( _ The whole point _ , Angela had sighed,  _ about Stonegarden is that you can have an on-site therapist. _

_ I just don’t… nevermind. _ Jack had said, and when she didn’t let him off because she never did,  _ I just don’t want anyone who’s got Gabe’s files, alright? _

She hadn’t pressed, after that.)

The therapist’s office is warmly lit, with soft pillows and unscented candles and gaudy decorations on the walls. Jack usually sits forward in the chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. She mimics him, sometimes.

She doesn’t treat him like she knows who he is, outside these walls. She doesn’t bring things up that he hasn’t told her, even if she must know they happened. Even if she watches the news, when he’s not allowed. 

He likes her.

Unfortunately.

“Do you wonder how things might be different,” Jack’s therapist asks him, today, “if you didn’t live with him?”

Jack narrows his eyes. “Define  _ things _ ,” he insists. The therapist smiles warmly. Jack likes that about her; that smile. It reminds him a little of Angela: knowing, but kind.

“Your feelings towards him,” she clarifies. “About him. For him. Whatever it is you might think about Gabriel--how might it change if you didn’t live with him?”

_ If you didn’t see him every day _ , he translates.  _ If you didn’t watch him eat his breakfast and brush his teeth and put his nightshirt on. If you didn’t see him as a human _ .

“I don’t think,” Jack says slowly, like the words might cut the insides of his mouth. “I don’t think I’d have forgiven him, all the way.”

She nods. “And you have, now?”

Jack bites down on the  _ yes _ that wants to escape like an automatic impulse. He tastes glass, and blood, and gunpowder.

\--

Ana visits. 

Gabe tries not to be home very much, when Ana visits.

They’ve tried to discuss that. It didn’t get very far--it ended in yelling, and a door slamming, and Gabe saying some shit that Jack knows he doesn’t mean, and some other shit that he knows he does. 

_ I don’t want to see her _ , is the first kind.  _ I don’t want her to see me _ is not quite the second, but once he tacks an  _ again _ on the end, Jack thinks it might be getting close.

Gabe’s not home this time, though, when Ana comes over. He’s out for a run, according to him. 

“He ever gonna stop avoiding me?” she asks Jack as he cooks. He’s set out a fruit and cheese plate for her, already, after her insistence that he do something appropriately domestic like that. 

“Probably,” Jack says. 

“When?” she asks, even though she knows Jack can’t and doesn’t know.

“He’s Gabe,” Jack sighs, and tries to ignore the minute twitch of Ana’s mouth. “He’s stubborn as hell, and twice as unpredictable. Could be tomorrow. Could be ten years.”

“I’ll bet towards ten,” Ana sighs. She pops a grape into her mouth and deftly pivots the subject. “You see the news about Cairo?” 

Well, she tries to. Jack, without turning to look at her, shakes his head. “No.”

“ _ No? _ ”

He faces her now, with a wry smile. “I’m not allowed to watch the news.”

Ana raises her eyebrows; it makes her eyepatch wiggle, and Jack stifles a laugh. “Not  _ allowed _ to watch the news,” she echoes. “What kinda logic is there behind that?”

Jack sets down their plates in front of them; Ana watches him the whole time, tracking his motions. He sinks down into the chair across from her. 

“Apparently,” he says, looking at his plate and his food and not at her, “the  _ way _ I watch the news is technically a form of self-harm.”

Ana doesn’t say anything, because what do you say?

And then Ana says something after all, because she’s Ana.

“You’re a goddamn piece of work, Jack,” she sighs, and he finds himself laughing in agreement. 

\--

It’s a Monday, now.

Routine helps get through it, despite the gnawing in Jack’s gut every time. He doesn’t know what Gabe feels, because Gabe doesn’t talk much on Mondays. 

They don’t go out at mid-day, this time. When Jack comes home from his run Gabe is napping, and it’s always and forever felt like a war crime to wake up Gabe when he’s napping. So Jack showers and doesn’t bother getting dressed beyond boxers afterwards. He crawls into bed.

When he wakes up Gabe’s putting his shoes on, and the clock says 16:00. Jack’s stomach chruns. 

“You want me to come along this time?” Jack asks. He doesn’t know what answer he’s hoping for. Never really does, these days. Tries not to hope for anything too specific. 

“Nah,” Gabe says. He finishes tying his shoes. “It’s nothing big today. Couple flushes. Just--getting out anything that’s started to build up.”

“Okay,” Jack says.

“I’m serious,” Gabe sighs. “It’s nothing big.”

You are being remade at the cellular level, Jack thinks. You are being stitched together, bit by bit, by the best scientists in the world. You are liable to fall apart at any moment. You are falling apart right now. You are by your own admission, by your doctors’ reports, at a 6 out of 10 pain rating on a good day, and an 8 out of 10 on a bad one, and these treatments bump you up to a 9.5. Only you would call this nothing big.

“Okay,” Jack says, and Gabe hesitantly, but with a firm grip, kisses him.

“Be back soon,” Gabe says. Jack nods.

He spends the rest of the day fretting. That’s what milling about becomes, once you’re worried.

He cleans the kitchen countertops. He sweeps the floors. He goes for a walk around the neighborhood, and smiles politely at the people he sees. He even makes himself dinner, and saves some for Gabe despite knowing better.

He falls asleep, alone, around two in the morning. It’s technically Tuesday, which are, in general, better than Mondays.

\--

Gabe crawls back into bed at god knows what hour.

He’s shaking, and drenched in sweat. Jack finds his mouth in the dark, presses a kiss into it that Gabe shudders through. He’s gripping onto Jack’s wrist hard, like if he lets go, he’ll break apart.

It feels so much like the SEP that sometimes Jack wants to claw his own skin off. 

“I’m here,” Jack insists, thick with sleep. “You’re here.”

“Hurts,” Gabe says, teeth gritted, “like a motherfucker.”

“Yeah,” Jack whispers. He can feel bruises forming on his wrists. He doesn’t care. “Yeah.”

\--

In the morning, as with a lot of Tuesday mornings, Gabe can’t even get out of bed. But he apologizes for the bruises, all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't really finished a multichapter fic so far but I am _determined_ , y'all. I have a lot to say here, okay.
> 
> I exist here, and also on [tumblr](https://besselfcn.tumblr.com/), and would love to hear from you in either place!


End file.
